Teen Spirit

The other Friday evening, a couple of Broadway stars were on the second floor of Sardi’s ordering pre-curtain cocktails. “I’ll have a virgin strawberry Daiquiri,” the leading lady was saying.

“A virgin piña colada?” the leading man said.

The show is “13,” a new musical, at the Bernard B. Jacobs, about the horrors of adolescence. Graham Phillips, a squinty fifteen-year-old in a cardigan and a tie—who took his piña colada with camomile tea—plays a Manhattan teen-ager who is forced to relocate to Indiana (“Noooooooo!”) after his parents separate. The entire cast is below voting age, not to mention Martini age. Still, Phillips gulped down his cocktail in a matter of seconds. “If it wasn’t for the brain freeze, I’d be having another,” he said.

Phillips, a Laguna Beach transplant, was dining out with three of his co-stars: Allie Trimm, a sandy-haired thirteen-year-old from San Diego; Delaney Moro, a Westchester girl and, at thirteen, the Broadway veteran, having played Jane Banks in “Mary Poppins”; and Aaron Simon Gross, the theatre buff—fourteen years old, a Boca Ratoner, loved “August: Osage County.” Everyone ordered spaghetti.

Life between performances, they said, had been fast-paced: exploring the subways “without our parents,” cycling through Central Park (exactly thirteen miles on a day off). They’d even held a pizza party with their across-the-street neighbors, the kids of “Billy Elliot.” “I swear I was going to step on one of them,” Moro said. “They were so small.”

“They may have looked small,” Phillips said, “but I thought they were going to be, like, ‘Hey, can I have a beer?’ ”

“They’re, like, seven going on seventy-four,” Moro said.

All in all, the “13” kids seemed to be riding out their awkward years on a showbiz cloud, though they acknowledged that the age has its pitfalls. When asked to name the worst part of being thirteen, Moro was unhesitating: “Boys.” Phillips took a more reflective approach. “I’d say it’s just getting labelled as something you’re not,” he said. “It’s actually a really important age. It’s when you develop the person that you’re going to be for the rest of your life.” He remembered his thirteenth year fondly; he’d landed a role in the movie “Evan Almighty” and sang on the Meat Loaf album “Bat Out of Hell III”—“back when I could sing boy soprano.” Gross said that his biggest hurdle had been practicing for his bar mitzvah. “I had the longest haftarah and the second-longest Torah portion,” he said.

Being in “13,” Moro explained, has made being thirteen a lot easier. “We’re so distracted from everything,” she said. “Personally, I had a lot going on before. I moved and my parents split up, right before the show started happening, in July. That all doesn’t come to my mind anymore.” She added, “Our child wranglers are really easy to talk to.” (The show employs three on-site guardians.)

At that point, the kids noticed a black car pulling up to “Equus,” across the street. A bloated figure with white hair and a cane emerged and started hobbling to the stage door. “Richard Griffiths!” one of them yelled.

“Where? Where?” Gross said. He took out his camera phone and leaned across the table. “I saw him in ‘The History Boys’ and was, like, Oh, my God.”

No mention of Harry Potter—clearly, this was a sophisticated crowd. But could they stack up against the average Sardi’s barfly in identifying the stars depicted in the restaurant’s famous caricatures? Gross went first, pointing out Norbert Leo Butz on a nearby wall. “Is that Sally Struthers?” Phillips said. (Correct.) “I did ‘Mame’ with her. She was Gooch. She was the best Gooch I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Trimm successfully picked out David Hasselhoff, but was stumped by a portrait of Gene Nelson. “He looks like a Who from Whoville,” she observed.

The kids spilled down the stairs and circulated around the main floor, calling out names. (“Lucille Ball!” “Joel Grey!” “Rafiki!”) Gross was on a roll. “Thomas Meehan!” he said. “I sat next to him at a show.” A waiter squeezed by, looking perplexed.

“Susan Stroman!”

“Matthew Broderick!”

“Rue McWhatserface!”

Trimm shrieked. “Bebe Neuwirth!” She climbed over a pair of pre-theatre diners, snapped a picture with her camera phone, and read off the inscription: “Ooh, I love my life.” From one Broadway baby to another. ♦

Under the southern portion of the city exists its negative image: a network of more than two hundred miles of galleries, rooms, and chambers.

As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.